Facebook pulls plug on Poke, cancels Camera

Facebook has pulled two of its mobile applications from the iOS App Store.

Users will no longer be able to download the company's Poke and Camera applications, though few ever really did in the first place. The company has removed both apps from the App Store and taken down help pages.

Facebook has not provided any additional comment on the matter beyond confirming that both apps have been pulled, suggesting the company wants both products to fade from memory as quickly as possible.

Designed to extend Facebook's reach into the mobile space, the Poke and Camera Apps sought to offer a Facebook branded alternative to the wildly popular Snapchat and Instagram mobile platforms.

Poke, designed as Facebook's answer to the self-deleting Snapchat, allowed users to send photos to one another with set time limits after which the images would go away. But while Snapchat became something of a phenomena, winning the hearts of sext-happy mobile users and imagining it had a value of more than $3bn, Facebook Poke was best known for being the source of a 2012 privacy spat featuring Facebook boss Marc Zuckerberg's little sister.

Camera, meanwhile, was Facebook's in-house attempt to offer photo filters and sharing options to mobile users. Aimed at taking on ubiquitous photo-sharing app Instagram, Camera found itself without much of a reason to exist after Facebook paid a handsome $715m to acquire the rival service.

The takedown of both apps comes in the wake of an earlier overhaul to Facebook's mobile platforms which includes the spin-off of mobile chat tools into a new application. ®